50 four girls. The boys played instruments and sang, and the girls just sang. We had Christiane Legrand, Michel' s SIster, and Bob Dorough, who was in Paris accompanying Sugar Ray Robinson. V\T e had a hit record- 'Lullaby of Birdland' sung in French. There was a marvellous ambience in Paris then, an easy, hanging-ou t-in-cafes ambience. Bud Powell was around, and so was Don Byas. I met Norman Granz, and he recorded me there. And I Inet my husband, Bobbv J aspar. He was playing flute and tenor saxophone where I was working, and we became friends right away. He came from a wealthy Bel- gian family, dnd he had a degree in chemistry and spoke three languages. His father was a well-known painter. We were mclrried in Liège, in 1955, and came back here the following year #" . , 1Jb z % """ ;("f- ;.'& \ J .ß I and lived in the Village He worked with Miles Davis and J. J. Johnson. Then we separated. He had a heart condition and became ill, and he died. I t was all very sad. I hope someday to get married again. "For the next several years, I worked around N ew York, at the Vil- lage Vanguard, opposite Miles Davis, who became a great friend, and the onginal Upstairs at the DownstaIrs Then I heard the album of 'Beyond the Fringe,' with Dudley Moore and Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett, and I was crazy about it. 1 met Dudle) Moore at the Vanguard one night when he was working there, and he asked me if I was English, and I said no, but that it was a great com- pliment that he had thought so. We talked until five in the morning at the << "I- 4ft. *' w ,f ..... '< .. "'" "'" '" ;. >>- _.J! :. >.,.fi ") ..;. ' :m '>$ -. aN 0 man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as 'If a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am invol l)ed in mankind; and there- fore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 'It tolls for thee." "Friend, you sure said a mouthful!" Vanguard, and it was through Dudley that I eventually got back to England. The English audiences seemed to take me in and like me, and I've been going every yecir since. In 1966, I started working for a month every summer at Ronnie Scott's club. The onlv thing I don't like about it is that the first show isn't until pleven-thirty and I don't fin- ish until two But I just sleep a little later in the morning to make up for it." I told Blossom Dearie it was five o'clock. "Oh, my," she said. "1'1] just run home and get dressed and put on some makeup You go out and poke around, or somethIng, and pick me up in twenty minutes. I like to get to the club real tarlv." She was all in blue and white and gold when I arrived. She was wearing a long royal-blue gown with white cuffs and a white Peter Pan collar, and her neatly parted hair shim- mered. She handed me the sheet music of "Lush Life," and, sitting down at the piano, asked me to prompt her. I prompted her twice, and when she was several bars from the end she stopped again. "1 just don't like the word 'rot' there. I hate it, and I won't sing it." I suggested "die" instead. She thought a moment. "Good! I'll try that." After she finished the song she said, "I thInk that works. All right, off we go! " T HREE is a long, narrow brick- walled place with a bar up front, a kitchen in the middle, and a small, square room in the back. The back room has an upright piano centered on one wall and facing a d07en tables. Joyce Ackers met us in the bar dnd said that she had spent the day trying to get the word around that Blossom Dearie would be singing that evening. She turned to me: "Anyway, Jean Bach, who produces Arlene Francis's radio show on ",TOR and is an old, old friend of Blossom's, is coming with a friend, and so is Harold Taylor. He used to be head of Sarah L.:l wrence, and he's an educational bigwig now. He's bringing Viveca Lindfors, who's dying to hear Blossom. And there may be a couple of other people." The friends arrived around six, and after Blossom Dearie had chatted with them she went into the back room and played by herself for ten minutes. Then she came out and said it was time. All nine or ten of us-several people had come in off the street-trooped into the back room. A heavy black curtain was drawn across the door, the lights went down, and she started in with "Ask Yourself "'Thy," by Michel Legrand. She has a busy, luminous, childlike look when she sings. Her brow furrows